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UK car insurance by numbers: how much should you pay?

13 Aug, 2014 9:15am

50,000 UK motorists told Driver Power about their car insurance experiences. Here's the low-down on the premiums, discounts and claims

There’s been a concerted effort over the past 12 months to try to rein-in spiralling insurance premiums. The AA says the average cost is down by £105 in 2014 and is now the lowest for three years. That tallies with our figures: only 28.2 per cent of you told us your premium had gone up in 2014, compared to 35 per cent last year.

More people experienced reductions, too, with 36.6 per cent cashing in; 25 per cent of you did in 2013. Most drivers are now paying less than £300 a year.

There’s clearly more work to be done, though, with only 71.5 per cent believing their current policies represent good value for money.

That translates into only half of our readers (52.8 per cent) saying they’d definitely renew, while 39.4 per cent told us they didn’t know, and would be swayed if they could find a better deal from other companies.

Cost was also the biggest factor in choosing an insurer (for 65.6 per cent of readers). A quarter of all respondents had changed provider in the past year, with 88 per cent of these putting this down to the price.

So how can you get the best deal? Well, Driver Power survey data would suggest that it pays to phone up and negotiate – and yet only 36.7 per cent of readers actually did this.

Most people take out insurance and hope they never have to use it, but when they do they expect a speedy resolution from their providers. Under two months was acceptable to settle for most drivers (84.9 per cent) and, while it seems the majority of insurers are meeting this target, the number has dropped since 2013, when 73 per cent of readers had their claims settled in this time.